


An Academic Diversion

by phoenixflight



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: 19th Century, Allusions to Ancient Greece, Fluff, Lake Geneva, M/M, Romantic poets are hilarious, Sexual Tension, implied polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 22:26:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/pseuds/phoenixflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What are you doing?” </p><p>Percy Shelley didn’t look up from the thick book he was thumbing through. “What’s it look like?” </p><p>Lord Byron hummed, and leaned on the wall above where Percy was lounging in a window seat, reading by the watery daylight. “Can I distract you?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Academic Diversion

**Author's Note:**

> Percy Shelley, his young mistress, Mary, their newborn son, and her half sister Claire Clairmont, spent the summer of 1816 in a rented house on Lake Geneva with the notorious Lord Byron and his personal "physician" sailing on the lake, writing poetry, telling ghost stories and drafting ground breaking science fiction. And have prodigious amounts of sex. Right?  
> Duh.

“What are you doing?” 

Percy Shelley didn’t look up from the thick book he was thumbing through. “What’s it look like?” 

Lord Byron hummed, and leaned on the wall above where Percy was lounging in a window seat, reading by the watery daylight. “Can I distract you?” 

Percy’s lips quirked up at the corners, but he kept his eyes on the leather bound book. “You can try.” His curls were almost honey-colored in the afternoon light through the leaded panes, and they fell in disarray around his face. 

“How shall I begin?” Byron asked, watching him closely. “With my unparalleled conversational prowess?” 

“That might work,” Percy said, and put his hand to his chin, fingers against his mouth in a deliberately meditative pose, thumb curling against his lower lip. Byron narrowed his eyes. 

“I see you found some of my Plato.” 

“Yes.” At that, Percy finally looked up. “Whoever annotated it had some interesting opinions on Alcibiades. It’s not your hand, is it?”

“No,” Byron grinned. “It was a gift from an old friend of mine at Cambridge. Quite the Greek scholar.” 

Percy raised his eyebrows. “I can tell.” There was a faint smirk playing on his lips, though anyone who didn’t know him might have dismissed it as a trick of the light “Personally I’ve always been more interested in his public career than his capricious youth, but I see the appeal. Young Alcibiades reminds me rather of someone I know.” 

“Oh really?” Byron grinned, crossing his arms and slouching against the side of the window casement, looking down at the younger man. “And what do you think of Alcibiades? Was he a great man?” 

“Oh, certainly. A genius even.” 

“Not a mad man then?” 

The smile Percy gave was small but his eyes creased up in mirth. “Well, I am intimately familiar with the way geniuses can be mad men.” 

Byron smirked. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.” 

“Oh, both.” Shutting the book gently, Percy laid it beside him and stretched, reaching his hands above his head and pulling his white shirt taught across his shoulders. It was unlaced at the collar, showing a deep vee of pale skin and the sharp shadow of his collarbones. “Where are the others?” he asked. 

“John and Claire went for a constitutional. She was feeling poorly, I think.”

Percy nodded. “Mary was often ill too when she was expecting.” 

“Is she still writing?” 

“I believe so.” 

Byron shook his head. “That sort of academic devotion is charming in a young man, but somewhat worrisome in a new mother. Shouldn’t she be looking after the baby?” 

“I think little William took a liking to your housemaid. I’m sure Mary was happy to leave him in her capable hands. Anyway, he’s eating solid foods now. Well, solid mush, anyway.” 

“Is he? They grow so fast at that age.” Byron gazed out the window into the pale blaze of the afternoon sun on the lake. “The sun is out, in any case. It’s too nice to be indoors writing.”

Percy laughed. “How do you ever get anything published when you can’t sit still long enough to put two lines to paper?”

“I write! When it’s not sunny. Or snowing. Or thundering. I like a good thunderstorm.” 

“Daft bastard,” Percy chuckled. “It was rainy and miserable this morning, and you still didn’t get anything done.” 

Byron raised his eyebrows and dropped a hand to let his fingers brush against Percy’s shoulder, just beside the open collar of his shirt. His skin was blood-warm through the cotton. “I was distracted.”

Percy let his head loll back against the stone wall as he looked up at Byron standing over him. It cast his eyes in shadow, making them suddenly dark and intent. “And, what? You thought you would come distract me in retribution?” 

“Perhaps.” Byron let his fingers wander from the taut muscle of Percy’s shoulder into the hollow at the base of his throat where his pulse pounded hot and close beneath the skin, up the vulnerable curve of his neck, the soft underside of his jaw, and let them rest finally on the soft bow of his lips. “Perhaps I want you as my muse tonight.” Percy made a soft noise in his throat, and his eye fluttered, color rising in his cheeks.

Byron pressed in with his thumb, feeling his lips part slightly, and the rush of hot, damp breath coming more quickly against his fingertips. “Tell me you want it too.” 

Percy made a little gulping sound, and turned his face into Byron’s stomach, so that his nose nudge against the lowest button of his waistcoat. “You make a dark thing of me, Byron.” 

“How’s that?” he asked, carding his fingers through Percy’s silky hair. Percy shivered under his hands. 

“You make me want the basest, filthiest pleasures. Not just want, revel in. I take delight in giving in to my worst nature when I am with you.” Tilting his head back, Percy looked up and met his gaze. For all his voice was plaintive, his eyes were sharp and alert. His fingers were already at work on the buttons of Byron’s waistcoat as he added, “You’ll make a monster of me yet.” 

Byron huffed out a laugh that died into a growl in his throat. “I’ve never met the man strong enough to make anything of you that you didn’t want.” 

“Oh, I want it,” he murmured darkly, plucking the silk shirt out of Byron’s waistband, and slipping chill fingers underneath. “All men want it.” Byron twitched when they touched his stomach, then let his breath out in a rush. “Yet you notice Socrates didn’t give in when Alcibiades wanted him.” 

Percy was unbuttoning his trousers, still kneeling on the window ledge and looking up at him with those dark, intent eyes. Byron swallowed heavily. “We would have the capacity to feel what we weren’t meant to experience.” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. “Besides. Socrates wasn’t a poet.” 

“Poetry, hmm? Anything in pursuit of a muse?” Looking up through his eyelashes, Percy flashed a brief and wicked smile. “We’ll write poetry the world will never forget.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you were confused about Alcibiades, what you need to know is he was an Athenian politician and general during the war with Sparta who was widely known for his inauspicious and reckless youth, and his uncommon beauty. Famously, he once crawled into bed with Socrates and offered himself to the man, but Socrates refused him (Symposium). Anyway, he grew up to be an extremely successful general for Athens in the war, but at home the people mistrusted him because of his history, and eventually kicked him out of office. He promptly turned traitor and went to work for the Spartans, which was devastating for the Athenians, until the Spartan king wanted him killed for seducing his wife. Or something. He spent the rest of his life in exile in Persia.  
> So, yeah. Madman, possibly, genius, possibly, really freaking interesting? Yes.


End file.
